


To Bed, To Bed, To Bed

by REINDOWN



Category: Gintama
Genre: Bittersweet, Dark, Depression, Free Verse, Heartwarming, M/M, Nightmares, Poetry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-19 07:15:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9425153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/REINDOWN/pseuds/REINDOWN
Summary: Their story told in verse. [GinHiji]





	1. Value

Keep your back to me, spine against mine.  
I want to feel the weight to tell me you’re fine.  
We are enduring struggle but not yet home,  
roaming the battlefield strewn with bone.  
Your boots are muddy, and mine bloody.  
You comb through the enemy; I slay, slay, slay.  
Keep away; I have killed again.  
Picking through soldiers, fathers, and sons,  
I think of their brothers, sisters, mums.  
Sword stills.  
Orphans are screaming.  
I feel your weight come and I just keep on killing.  
We have a goal.  
We have a goal.  
So I steal and steal from soul upon soul.  
If I weighed my gold against yours, dear foe,  
who is so bloody, bold and resolute,  
I could take no more from you or your kin.  
But there’s a back to me worth the earth, for this  
I thieve, naïve,  
and cold silver will cut through gold again.  
Keep your back to me, spine against mine  
For I am weak and feeble,  
drunk and unable to still the tremors in my hand.  
Nine, ten down, red vines crawl up my arms,  
The signs of death wind up to my neck.  
Fine droplets splatter, the black murder scatters.  
Come land between me and what I have done.  
You’re there. I have to remind myself.  
I compare your clarity with the chaos encircling,  
your glare piercing a path for us and a wealth of  
gold loses its shine in the grass.  
Hold me.  
I’m shaking under the weight on my shoulders.  
You sate my conscious,   
sedate my mind into numbness,  
erase my gutless self and sins …  
Hold me close.   
I’m scared of what I was.  
It's over now - the fight that is -  
but the peace I thought I'd find is amiss.  
You kiss my lips but it feels so stale.  
I move to follow you yet my heels fail,  
the corpses behind are holding me back.  
I hear them wail at me – _my daughter,  
my wife, _  
You have slaughtered a father,  
a partner,  
and for what cause?  
All for those decrepit morals of yours.


	2. Worth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the battle, Hijikata tries to heal Gintoki but his partner isn't there.

Your mind strays from me,  
still your eyes on me.  
Dance your lips across my neck, for me.  
Once more, for me,  
search the dips in my bone.  
I can tell by your tone.  
You’re chained down to the past, I see.  
What you did wasn’t wrong.  
You were stronger, you won.  
But now you’re left despising,  
hating what you’ve done.  
It was worth it, my love.  
I kiss your cheeks; you’re still not there,  
whispering your name into your chest  
and to you it's just air.  
I can't love like this.  
Where are you now?  
You stare at the ceiling, dreaming.  
You’re with him, aren’t you?  
You can't feel me, can you?  
I'm leaning against you and I'm just a weight.  
I’m seeing see us two and you’re on the front.  
You’re hunting blood whilst I’m in the rush.  
You’re pushing away and I bear the brunt.  
Human beyond humans,  
you care and you feel.  
You love more than anyone,  
give more than many would,  
hurt more than plenty could.  
There is no difference,  
no bad and good.  
Whether you lay the grave or fill,  
moving forwards or remaining still,  
with black heart or good will,  
to kill is to kill.  
For your repentance,  
each night of remembrance,  
you are a good man.  
To me, you are good.  
So please look at me,  
lay your palms on me,  
wrap your arms around me,  
come back to me.  
You are a good man.  
You are righteous.  
You are truthful.  
You _are_ worthy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all of you for the support! This project is so fun for me to work on. I'm glad the response was so positive. With poetry, you can't escape crappiness very well eh heh ... I did say that I would be concentrating on Spell and TIYB though, so I'll have to slow this down for a while whilst I type up a few chapters.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	3. Temperance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gintoki awakens one morning

Waking up to you is beautiful.  
The crease in your brow,  
I don’t know how,  
it just makes me feel okay.  
Sometimes sleep isn’t easy to find.  
A rolling head,  
my comrades dead -  
I’m glad you decided to stay.  
This morning in particular  
I love how your nose  
crinkles as you doze :  
What is it you’re thinking today?  
It's warm under these sheets.  
Though it's nearly noon  
and I’m leaving soon,  
I’m planning excuses to delay.  
I recall once upon a time when  
we were you and I,  
we were passers-by.  
Love was how much you'd care to pay.  
I remember the year passed:  
some tentative looks,  
then ropes and handcuffs.  
Straight forward romance led astray.  
And just as I'm lost in thought,  
blue eyes flutter,  
your lips mutter  
'Good morning' in the sun's dim ray.  
I always wait for our time to end.  
For you to awaken  
and see that I'm broken,  
toss my dull and cracked body away.  
Before your eyes are fully open,  
full wound inspection,  
checking for infection,  
though we were both caught in the same fray.  
I tell you how precious you are to me  
inside my head  
and aloud instead  
I complain that you smell like an ashtray.  
Our relationship is full of chaos.  
Drunken fights,  
kisses and bites;  
I'd have it no other way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> catharsis-reindown.tumblr, password rain  
> (ﾉ´ヮ´)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧


	4. Fortitude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gintoki recalls his past with Otose

Christmas isn’t white.  
There are grey skies all day and every colour is drained away  
leaving a tainted world behind, a dirty white, blocking sunlight  
where crisp blue has been mauled.  
Impure; hollow; bleak.  
Not a bird in the sky, no swallow's wing, no song or chirp.  
Greenery is dead, beating hearts retreat under the earth.  
Winter knows not life or birth, the circle ends.  
Things only die in wintertime.  
I still remember that bitter cold turning the blood in my veins to treacle.  
I understood that the end was coming,  
crawled to a graveyard to call it near,  
too frozen to feel the feet I walked on  
or even the fear.  
As if by request the snow fell to bury me,  
prepared a funeral attended only by the dead,  
bled my name onto the soil - my resting place,  
underfed and frozen, asleep on a glorious four poster bed.  
Coffin-less.  
The cheapest death awaiting,   
none to pay the price but myself and mother.  
Just a fallen another who never truly learned to walk,  
ran towards death, fed the hawks a spineless corpse  
vein by vein, in vain.   
That December, I lived and this one, I thrive.  
You relit the dying embers -   
A fire so alive it grew tails to touch the earth,  
cast shadows taller than the monsters it lighted.  
The cold was barred by the warmth of a door.  
I learned the taste of food once more,  
refreshed my tongue with substance,  
my head with calmness and my eyes with peaceful darkness,  
knew easy sleep once more - one from which I could awaken,  
unshaken, without alert.  
Though Wintertime is still monotony,   
I have the tools to shut it out, the brush to paint-over doubt,  
colour drought ocean blue and turn about tsunamis.  
I have you.  
I have him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wrote this in the way I'm most comfortable and enjoy (ﾉ･д･)ﾉ  
> Dropping this again - catharsis-reindown.tumblr, password rain.


	5. Spite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hijikata thinks about Gintoki and his rival.

Who is he to you?  
I curled my hands into my sides  
so that they wouldn't touch you,  
cemented my feet into the earth, kept the sky at bay.  
Each night I sleep with you  
separated by another man whose name you whisper.  
It isn't love in your words …  
but I still can't rest.  
Mornings I rise with the sun without feeling its warmth  
and I'm gone before you can learn my face.  
You don't know whether I'm sleepy  
grumpy  
ugly  
or beautiful.  
You don't know me when the sun rises.  
Who is he to you?  
I've already asked but it's on my mind,  
always there.  
Always, always there.  
A virus within you that you've passed on to me.  
Now he coils around our legs under the moon,  
tastes the warm air between us so that he can   
poison it with his own stench.  
The snake you harbour lives in your dreams  
and mine.  
It lives off the rats tails in your mouth,  
the vermin in your eyes each time I look at you.  
Always there.  
And it's not your fault.  
 _I_ let the snake in.  
I turned your words into critters of the night,  
morphed everything you did into jealousy.  
Green scales line my fingertips:  
the real monster is me.  
Always there,  
coiled in my intestines,  
the need to know:  
who is he to you?


	6. Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hijikata and Gintoki are separated

Separation.

How long, how far, how hard will it be?

And when you return … will it be to me?

The love I earned, the time I took to know you,

I don't want it to unravel to a lousy piece of string,

barely one, frayed.

You were so hard to tie up,

full of knots and rigid plaits.

You barred me from picking you apart

but I used two hands to tie us together.

Because you didn't want to know about love!

Neither did I, but you pulled me in.

Trapped, wound into you,

unable to pull apart even when the wind blew.

Storms couldn't break us.

Distance can.

Time can.

 _You_ can.

If I'm not there, will you cut me away?

All of these questions, wanting me to stay.

Because I don't trust you alone;

you don't trust yourself.

Snip the knot and forget,

throw the waste of us away and leave it to rot.

I'm leaving now, you won't say goodbye.

Nothing more than a wave -

guess I'll have to get by.

There's a war pushing us apart,

stretching our limits.

I have to go now, I do.

I won't say goodbye -

I don't really have to.

Hoping I've done enough to tie you to me

I'll return here someday

across oceans, mountains

lakes and skies

through nightfalls and sunrise,

hoping I've done enough

to return

and see love in your eyes.

 


	7. Sorrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hijikata can't give him everything.

Quiet nights belong to us             we'll sleep the whole night through.

But their first words and stuttering steps

Forgive me,             I can't give them to you.

With no chain to home we can certainly              fly,

chase mermaids in the seafoam.              Yet

there's something we'll never find.

No matter how far away from ourselves we roam.

 

A stray dog,              like me,              wouldn't care.

You know I don't want for a pack at my heel.

But a man              like you              needs a family, and for us that’ll always be surreal.

You can crack every wrinkle with me.

We can feel the years              run through us

and every day we live and kiss we give will seem lacking in your eyes.

There’s an earth to pick apart, a whole universe to upturn,

a thousand people to run into and whole empires to burn

and exciting as our whole lives could be

I know

to you

there’d be something missing             with just you and me.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Catch me on tumblr reindown dudes
> 
> I really like writing these ... don't worry, I'm working on TIYB too, tee hee. Formatting was a nightmare here

**Author's Note:**

> For more of my works, go to my tumblr, catharsis-reindown.tumblr with password rain. You don't need an account :) Hope you enjoyyyyeedd!


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